


Three things that might have happened in the woods and the one that definitely (albeit improbably) did

by fleurlb



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, Memories, On the Run, Púca | Pooka, Repressed Memories, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator, Yuletide Treat, what really happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:07:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/pseuds/fleurlb
Summary: Does what it says on the tin.





	Three things that might have happened in the woods and the one that definitely (albeit improbably) did

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threadofgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadofgrace/gifts).



**I.**

_July, 1993_

Rob stumbles along a street in Budapest, his ears still ringing, his buddies somewhere in the throng. Leave it to Jonesy to pick a Depeche Mode show in Budapest for his stag. He isn't even sure how he has friends, let alone one who's old enough to be getting married. The trip was a stretch for Rob, both of his budget and his comfort zone, and he tries not to panic as the crowd thins out yet no one and nothing looks the least bit familiar. 

He makes a few turns, but they must be wrong ones, because he finds himself in a warren of darkened alleyways, perfumed by last night's rubbish and feral cats. Uneasiness runs through him, as though the walls are closing in. 

He sees a shape in a doorway, tenses, and then feels foolish as he realises it's a woman, mid-50s, soft and round like rising bread. He gives a brief nod, to let her know that he's not a threat, and she speaks, her voice raspy and accented.

“I know what you did.”

“Pardon?” He hadn't expected English and thinks his buzzing brain must be mangling Hungarian sounds into the shape of English.

“I. Know. What. You. Did.” She enunciates and spaces out each word, so he has no choice but to understand her.

His feet stop even though his heart longs to run. 

“A terrible weight to carry. Two souls.”

He shakes his head, like he can't understand her. Or maybe like he's protesting. He's still not exactly sure what's happening. Despite the humid night pressing in on him, a chill sweat prickles the back of his neck.

“Adam, shame.” She leans forward, nearly invading his space. 

“What did you call me?” The words tumble out his mouth. What does this woman know and how does she know it? He hasn't answered to Adam in nearly as many years as he did. 

“I called you nothing. I said it was a damn shame, the way things ended, no?” She brushes his hands off her arms, and Rob doesn't remember putting his hands on her.

“I really don't know what you're talking about.” His voice carries an edge of panic. 

“You do. Come in to my office. We talk about it. Talk about the blood on your hands. What you can do to set your soul free.”

Rob blinks, then lets his eyes travel across the crumbling brick facade of the building. He spots a blinking light in the window, flickery blue neon in the shape of a crystal ball. 

“Madam Varga knows all, sees all.” It's a new voice, deeper and unmistakably male. Rob spins around to see a smaller man with a rodent-like face advancing on him. It's a hustle. It's got to be a hustle. Weren't they warned about this? His pockets will be picked next.

He stumbles backward, his eyes darting between the two figures, keeping them in sight until he feels he's put enough distance between him and them that he's able to turn and run.

He tells himself later that it was just a hustle, that no one knows anything. That there's nothing to know. He nearly believes himself. 

**II.**

_October, 2007_

“We never had any trouble with her at all! Not until we got her that computer and she started being on that Bilbo site morning, noon, and night.” The girl's mother is on the verge of hysterics.

“Bebo, Ma, the site is called Bebo,” interjects the girl's gangly 12-year old brother. 

“All right. With your permission, Mrs. O'Leary, I'd like to search Aisling's room. Conor here can help me while my partner takes a detailed history from you.” Rob is keen not get stuck with the mother, and he knows Lochlann is better at dealing with hysteria. He also knows that he'll owe Lochlann yet another one, the pile of unpaid favours stacking up precipitously. 

The mother nods and collapses into a kitchen chair, nearly folding in on herself while Lochlann murmurs something about making a cup of tea. Rob follows Conor down a dim corridor and up a narrow flight of stairs, the carpet dingy and nearly worn clean off in places. 

The girl's room is clean and mostly tidy.A few discarded outfits are heaped in front of a full-length mirror. The bed is made, but just barely, the duvet thrown hastily over a tangle of sheets. A laptop is open on the desk, a cheery screensaver of fish bubbling away. 

“So, Conor, what can you tell me about your sister that can help us find her?” asks Rob as he sits down in the desk chair. 

Conor shrugs and looks away. “Dunno much.”

“Did she have a boyfriend? Was she talking to anyone on Bebo?”

Conor seems to be examining a hole in his runners. Rob's sure he knows something and is unsure why he isn't grabbing the chance to tell what he knows. In the kitchen, he struck Rob as the kind of kid who would revel in the chance to be the knowledgeable one. 

Rob puts his elbow on the desk and leans back, judging it perfectly so that it seems like he's settling in and trying to cajole the boy, but really, he wants to see if the screensaver is password-protected. 

The fish disappear and the screen brightens, showing an open browser window with a Bebo chat history. Bingo. 

“Hey, aren't you violating her privacy?” asks Conor. 

“Your sister is a minor, and she is missing for 48-hours. She doesn't get much privacy if we feel she's endangered. Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything that's going to help?”

Conor sighs and flops down on the bed, all knees and elbows. “She's very secretive, but I seen her with a fella, older, definitely older. It was at the Blanch, a couple of weeks ago.”

“When you say older, do you mean a couple of years? Would he be in secondary school? College?”

“Way older than that. Probably 30. Maybe even older. He had grey hair, thinning. He was wearing a suit. I asked her about it, and she said he's a modeling agent. He seen her photos on Bebo and thought she had talent, wanted to meet up. She was going to get pictures taken in a few weeks, which I guess woulda been a couple days ago.”

Rob feels his heart pick up its pace. The world has always had its fair share of terrible people, but the Internet now makes their evil so much easier and untraceable. He swivels the chair around and find a chat history full of enough to fill several warrant sheets, but clues about where the girl might be are still thin on the ground. 

As Rob scribbles a few choice items from the chat history, he's aware of a door banging open and a commotion downstairs. Conor belts down the stairs, and Rob takes the chance to search a couple of desk and dresser drawers, but he find little of police interest. A shout from his partner brings him downstairs where a disheveled and pale-looking teenage girl is sobbing into her mother's arms. Rob recognises her from the Bebo profile.

The case is no longer a misper, given the sobs and words coming from the girl, it's serious, though thankfully not as tragic as it might have been. Lochlann makes the calls to transition the case to specialist detectives. Rob makes a few calls of his own to get the computer collected and start the warrant process for the online records

Lochlann stays behind while he drives back to the station alone, his mind wandering until he thinks he remembers a snippet of conversation he overheard long ago. 

“He's a talent scout. And he said he could help us.” Jamie had said it just as Rob had hopped the wall into the field where they were waiting for him. 

“Help us do what?” he'd asked. And he'd been brushed off. Not as badly as that other day, the terrible day that he still doesn't remember. But now Rob wonders. What if they'd thought they were running to something, some kind of stardom, and had instead run into a trap? He snaps on the radio to stop his mind from stumbling down the dark cul-de-sac of what could happen to adolescents who trust the wrong person. 

**III.**

_April, 2015_

He's at lunch with Decco and Jim, eating dry sandwiches in the canteen when his phone buzzes. It's a new phone, and he still hasn't gotten to grips with it, which gives the rookie Decco a lever to press, even though Rob tries not to show how much the ribbing gets to him. Forty is pressing down on him in a way that thirty never did. 

He pulls out his phone and can see that it's just a news alert, not a text. He's about to put the phone back in his pocket when Decco grabs his arm and reads aloud.

“One-eyed raccoon terrorizing town in County Cork! That's gas. Sure, those cowboys should be well able for a one-eyed furry bandit. C'mon, Rob, open it there. I want to see this lad. Pics or it didn't happen.”

Rob suspects Decco is hoping to see him fumble with his phone, but he's intrigued enough by the story that he manages to do whatever combination of swiping and tapping and sorcery required to open the phone right to the story. 

There is a pic, blurry but unmistakably a raccoon although the one-eye is only confirmed by multiple witnesses. The County Council's dog warden speculates that the raccoon was a pet who grew less tame after puberty, and there's the requisite warning from an animal expert not to buy exotics. 

“I've always wanted a monkey. Maybe it's actually possible,” says Decco with thoughtful look of a man putting something on his to-do list. 

“A mate of mine was in the States a few years back, visiting his daughter, who married a guy who was a college professor,” says Jim as he dabs a bit of mayonnaise from his mouth with a napkin.

“Old-timer, you telling a story or giving a witness statement? We don't need to know all these details,” says Decco, a typical good-natured jibe about Jim's fastidiousness when setting up a story. 

“Hush, Rookie. You think 'Staaaaary' is adequate set-up. You, as always, are wrong. As I was saying, my mate was in...Oklahoma? No, I think it was Ohio.”

Decco mimes falling asleep, but Jim ignores him. Rob realizes he could learn a lot of Jim, although he'll have to hurry since the old man is retiring in December. 

“The mate's wife wants to see some building that looks like a basket, and afterwards, she wanted to visit this town that has a bunch of art galleries. And they had dinner there and just before they were going to leave, the waiter told them that some fella's gone crazy and let loose an entire zoo of animals.”

“This story's gone from boring to ridiculous. You're sure your mate isn't doolally?” Decco points at his head and makes big looping circles.

Jim shakes his head. “It was on the news and everything, later. But at the time, they thought that the waiter was having them on, so they paid the bill and left, only to hit a roadblock on the edge of town. This fella had an entire private zoo. Loads of tigers and lions. Monkeys. A baboon. Bears. And he set all of them loose and then shot himself in the head. The police were up all night, shooting wild animals.”

“That sounds like a video game. Just as well it was in the States. They'd have the weaponry to handle a lion invasion. Can you imagine if that happened here? If someone had a lion get loose here?”

“I'd like to think that we're more sensible than our American cousins and wouldn't be collecting lions and tigers here,” says Jim as he folds the paper wrapping of his sandwich into a perfect square, signaling the end of lunch.

The words clatter in Rob's head as they walk back to the squad room, hitting off each other like flints until a spark catches. Back that summer, there had been great excitement when a Hollywood producer bought a down-at-the-heels old manor house not far from Knocknaree. 

Rob goes through the motions at his desk for a decent interval, then puts on his jacket and makes a vague announcement about following up a lead with a witness on a burglary case. The witness is 83 years of age and fond of rambling stories about her childhood, so neither Decco nor Jim offer to go along. 

Rob walks to a library that has an extensive microfiche collection of newspapers. He knows he could search online, but he doesn't know exactly what he's searching for and nothing beats looking through newspapers chronologically. Plus, he doesn't want to leave any kind of electronic record. He hasn't been to the library in over a year, maybe even two years, but his luck is in-- his favorite librarian, Mary, hasn't yet retired and is happy to fetch him what he needs, even if she fusses over him a shade too much for his comfort. 

After promising to have a cup of tea after his research, Rob is able to scan the microfiche in peace. He starts in January and works his way through, spotting a brief story about the producer completing the sale of the house in March. His eyes start feeling the strain by May, and he's just about to give up when he sees a story about the dog warden seizing a baby crocodile and a lion cub from a manor house. No names or locations are given, but Rob feels that tingle at the back of his neck that let's him know he's on the right track.

He pushes his chair so that he can lean back. He closes his eyes and pictures the woods, tries to remember the scene. The alarmed screaming of birds then silence. A flash of tawny brown. The glint of yellow eyes. The scrape of feline claws. 

It's tempting to believe that was how it happened, but it's the hollow tempting of an empty promise. His neck isn't tingling. His brain isn't remembering. It's just another in a long list of dead ends to scratch off his list. He picks up his jacket and heads to the desk for his cup of tea. 

 

**The truth....or maybe a truth**

He's running, trying to keep up with Jamie and Peter. He's going to go with them. He doesn't care where they're going. He just can't be left behind. But the woods are doing strange things. They seem to be stretching and bending, warping and spinning. Laughter and strange shrieks echo in his ears. His heart feels like it might explode, but he pushes harder, pumps his legs faster as branches whip at his face and legs. 

Just when he thinks he's about to lose them, he sees their shapes pause in a clearing. Or maybe it's the clearing. The woods, once as familiar as his bedroom, are now strange and sinister, their topology changed from his mental map, like spilt water melting a watercolor painting into fuzzy edges and a jumble of trees. 

The clearing is dark, darker than the rest of the woods, which his brain has trouble processing, but when he gets closer, he realizes that the darkness isn't a state, it's a thing, a big hulking beast that takes shape even as he tries to blink it away. It's massive and rangy, with the powerful body of a stallion and great obsidian antlers, sharpened to vicious points, that are somehow both dark and glinting. 

He slows his pace and tried to watch, tries to creep silently. Peter and Jamie are frozen, transfixed by the beast, who is now bowing, like a horse begging for treats, one leg stretched out and the other kneeling on the ground. Jamie and Peter approach slowly, and then, inexplicably, Jamie jumps onto its back, all lithe grace, and Peter follows.

“No!” The word is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. He breaks into a run again, nearly making it into the clearing, but a vine grabs his foot and trips him. He scrambles on all fours, face in the dirt and knees scraping. 

The thing is on him in an instant, snuffling and then he screams out at the sharp pain in his back. He hears nothing but laughter and his face reddens, worry that his friends are laughing at him. But something in him realizes that the laughter is not human. He manages to look up and he sees the faces of his friends, and he can't recognise them. They nearly look inhuman, becoming something more, something different. 

The beast snuffles more, suddenly interested in his feet, and he takes his chance, grabs a rock and slashes out at its leg. The shriek nearly burst his eardrum. The beast rears up on its hind legs, and he curls up in a ball, waiting to die. 

But then the woods are spinning, colors blurring and time warping. Nothing makes sense. Nothing feels real. His head rings with the shriek of the beast, and his terror starts to feel like it could choke him. Another feeling settles over him, warm and calming, whispering to him to just close his eyes and rest. Darkness overtakes him and he willingly slides down into unconciousness. 

When he wakes, he remembers nothing but terror and laughter. He shouts for his friends, but he knows deep in his heart, he will always be alone.


End file.
